Tiedemann
by The Abbot of Beregost
Summary: A personal audio log left by Hans Tiedemann reveals some of the backstory of the Sprawl itself. Minor spoilers.


**A/N: ** I think that Hans Tiedemann is one of the more interesting characters in the Dead Space 2 story. So, I wrote this little piece once I finished the game. Now, fair warning: spoilers ahead.

[AUDIO LOG BEGINS...TRANSCRIBING]

Growing up on Titan Station was a special kind of hell. My father did his best to protect me from it, of course. In the end, it was the end of the line for a lot of people. Unemployment was rampant. There wasn't much in the way of education to be had, no jobs save breaking rock in the asteroid belt or smelting it in the station. My father studied Roosevelt, tried to get public works projects going. I watched him struggle before he...exiled me. I resented him at the time, but by the time I returned, I realized that he had been right to send me away. The place had a way of dragging a person down. Twenty percent of the population was sustained by EarthGov welfare at any given time. Looking at it years later, I saw that the place lacked options: become a miner or foundry worker, work sixty hours a week for criminally low wages, lose a limb or die in more than ten percent of cases. Or, plead infirmity, and make almost the same amount of money. Even then, a stack of credits every month doesn't do the soul good. It rots you from the core. The smart ones stayed busy.

Four years in Colorado Springs changed me. I came away with a major in Political Science and a commission in the navy, the first from Titan Station in ten years to have completed a university degree. Ten years. That's a long time to be trapped in ignorance. At any rate, I did two tours in the Navy, both on corvettes. I chased pirates from one end of the asteroid belt to the other, stopping in every six months at home. Titan, before it became the Sprawl. Things were coming apart in front of everyone. Anyone who could scrape enough credits together, or had a good enough work history with any of the mining cartels to get transfered, was leaving. Whole sections of the ring were abandoned as people moved out. By the end of my second tour, the population had plummeted, squalor and poverty were rampant. Crime had soared. My father was a strong man, but even he started to fall apart. He ended up dying of a stress induced aneurism in October of 2496. I took command the same week.

In all my time away, I had made a simple maxim mine: knowledge is power. Only people with education got far in life, gained either at school or by themselves. Six months into my position as Director, I had a plan. I leveled several slums, and offered substantial incentives to any corporations willing to establish research and development divisions on the Sprawl. I rebuilt the libraries, the schools, established trade schools and a university. I strained the budget almost until it broke, but five years later the station had become a gleaming example of progress. People flocked to Titan Station to establish businesses, start families. Mining and smelting remained the backbone of the economy, but methods improved, followed shortly by safety. Hundreds of thousands of people wanted to leave Earth, and I gave them opportunities. Of course, it came at a price: an old friend who worked in Psychological Warfare contacted me. He was never the most...ethical of people. He made a special request on the part of certain interested parties, including the CEC, to establish high-security research facilities on the station. No interference, no oversight, no questions. I know what that means. I try not to think about what they're doing over on the spinward side of the ring. If they hadn't made that arrangement, I simply wouldn't have had the money to turn the station around. Doctor Faustus would have bee proud- ten years, and the devil hasn't come for me yet.

The Church of Unitology became a thorn in my side rather quickly. Before I had taken control, the Church had a massive following amongst the downtrodden and the miners. It was easy- those poor souls had nothing else to cling to. So, naturally, the Church was extremely vocal when I rebuilt places of learning. Any place that dared call the Marker a simple alien artifact was vandalized, sometimes firebombed. There were protests outside the university almost daily. I had to do something. Between my military contacts and the stream of anti-Church unemployed, I soon had a riot squad. Perhaps not the crack squads they have in Detroit and Mumbai, but my men broke enough heads that the Unitologists tried to use their union influence to cause a general strike. It didn't work, and the cost to the Church had them at the table before year's end. They stopped protesting and causing disturbances, and I gave permission for the church to expand and upgrade their facilities. They even received their own housing districts. Five years have passed since we signed that truce. Five years of uneasy peace, and now this. My police chief is reporting something strange happening aboard the Ishimura. Several of the cleaning crew have gone missing. I've been briefed on this- the Riot Squad is heading there to sweep the ship, stem to stern. I'm warming up the fleet of gunships we bought during the piracy scare. I sincerely hope this isn't what it sounds like.

[AUDIO LOG ENDS]


End file.
